Peter Robinson - Friend of the Devil

“Well, yes… along with all those other problems, she was in… well, you probably also know, then, that she did attempt suicide. I’m sure it’s in the police files.”

“Yes,” Annie lied. No point in letting Dr. Henderson think she’d given too much away. She would only clam up.

“I suggested a course of hypnotherapy, and Kirsten agreed.”

“The aim of which was?”

“Healing, of course. Sometimes you have to confront your demons to vanquish them, and you can’t do that if your memory is blocking them out.”

Annie felt she knew a thing or two about that. “And did she?”

“No. As I said, I think it was becoming too painful for her. She was getting too close. At first, progress was very slow, then she started remembering too much too fast. I think she felt she was losing control, and she started to panic.”

“What about confronting the demons?”

“It takes time,” said Dr. Henderson. “Sometimes you need a lot of preparation. You need to be ready. I don’t think Kirsten was. It would have felt like driving down a busy motorway before she’d learned to drive.”

“How far did she get?” Annie asked. “Did she remember anything significant about her attacker?”

“That wasn’t the point of the treatment.”

“I realize that, Doctor, but perhaps as a by-product?”

“I’m not sure,” Dr. Henderson said.

“What do you mean, you’re not sure?”

“That last session, Kirsten’s voice was difficult to hear, her words hard to catch. Afterward, when she came out of it, she seemed shocked, stunned at what she remembered. Even more so than usual.”

“But what was it?”

“I don’t know. Don’t you understand what I’m telling you? I don’t know. She left in a hurry, and she didn’t come back, except to let my secretary know that she wouldn’t be coming anymore.”

“But what do you think it was? What do you think shook her so much?”

Dr. Henderson paused again, then Annie heard her say in a voice barely above a whisper, “I think she remembered what he looked like.”

“Where’ve you been?” said Murdoch. “I’m getting fed up of this. I want to go home.”

“Not just yet, Jamie,” said Banks. “A few more questions first. Let’s start at the top. Maybe we can keep this short. Did you rape and kill Hayley Daniels?”

“No! How could I? You’d have seen me. There’s no way out of the pub without being on CCTV.”

Banks glanced over at Ms. Melchior, who appeared uncomfortable. She said nothing. Banks leaned forward and linked his hands on the table. “Let me tell you what I think happened, Jamie, and you can tell me if I’m wrong. Okay?”

Jamie nodded, still not looking up.

“You’d had a bad day. Been having a bad life lately, if truth be told. That miserable pub, always by yourself, the landlord sunning himself in Florida. Even Jill kept calling in sick. And she wasn’t just a help behind the bar, she was easy on the eye, too, wasn’t she? But she didn’t want anything to do with you, did she? None of them did. I think maybe you entertained the fantasy of getting Jill alone in the Maze. You knew she used it as a shortcut. Maybe that’s what you had planned for Saturday night. Finally plucked up the courage. But Jill called in sick, didn’t she, and that spoiled your little plan. Until Hayley Daniels arrived. You’d seen her around for years, even asked her out when you were at college, before you failed half your first-year courses and dropped out. Isn’t that right, Jamie?”

Murdoch said nothing. Ms. Melchior scribbled away on her legal pad and Winsome stared at a spot high on the wall.

“That Saturday night, after she called you names and insulted your manhood, you hurried them out and you heard them talking out front. Hayley had a loud, strident voice, especially when she was drunk or upset, which she was. You heard her telling her friends what a useless bastard you were, a ‘limp dick,’ all over again, in the public market square, for anyone to hear, and you left the door open a crack so you could hear them. How am I doing so far, Jamie?”

Murdoch continued to pick away at his fingernails.

“You heard Hayley say she was going down into the Maze to relieve herself, though I doubt that’s exactly how she put it. She had a foul mouth, didn’t she, Jamie?”

Murdoch looked up for a moment at Banks. “She was very coarse and crude,” he said.

“And you don’t like that in a woman, do you?”

He shook his head.

“Right, so we have the friends dispersed and Hayley heading off by herself into the Maze. Well, it didn’t take you long to figure out how you could get out there and give her what for, did it?”

“I’ve told you,” Murdoch said in a bored voice without looking up. “I couldn’t have got round there without being seen.”

“Jamie,” Banks said, “do you know anything about a storeroom attached to the Fountain, beyond the wainscoting upstairs?”

The pause before Murdoch said “No” told Banks all he needed to know.

“We’ve found it, Jamie,” said Banks. “No need to keep that lie afloat anymore. We’ve found the room, the way out, the clothes you kept there, your ‘assault kit,’ the condoms, the hairbrush, the lot. We’ve found it all. Planning quite a career, weren’t you?”

Murdoch turned very pale and stopped worrying the nail he was working on, but he said nothing.

“You’d been dreaming of something like that for a long time, hadn’t you?” Banks went on. “Fantasizing. You’d even prepared that kit to wipe traces of evidence from the body, pick up all your pubic hairs. Very clever, Jamie. But you had no idea Hayley would be your first, did you? You thought it would be Jill. Maybe also you just wandered around there after closing time hoping someone, anyone, would come along, but this was too good an opportunity to miss, wasn’t it? What a beginning to an illustrious career. That foulmouthed, sexy, tantalizing bitch Hayley Daniels.”

“Mr. Banks, could you tone it down a bit,” said Ms. Melchior, but her heart wasn’t in it.

“Sorry,” said Banks. “Would you prefer me to use euphemisms? Make it all sound a lot nicer?” He turned back to Jamie. “You went out by the usual way, and you saw Hayley doing her business there in the alley like a common tart. I suppose it excited you, didn’t it, the way looking through that peephole into the ladies’ excited you. You probably couldn’t even wait until she’d finished. You knew about the leather-goods storeroom and the weak lock, and that was where she was squatting, wasn’t it, right by the door? We found traces of her urine there. She’d been sick, too. You took her before she could even get her knickers up and dragged her in the shed, onto the soft pile of leather remnants. Very romantic. But one little thing went wrong, didn’t it? In all your excitement, you’d forgotten to switch your mobile off, and it plays a very distinctive ring tone quite loud, a real song, The Streets’ ‘Fit But You Know It,’ that you bought online. Very appropriate, don’t you think? Someone heard that, Jamie. He didn’t recognize it at first, but someone else heard it, too, a week later when you were leaving the Fountain. Who was it, Jamie? Your boss calling from Florida, the way he usually does at the end of the night? He couldn’t reach you on the phone in the Fountain, so he rang your mobile. Is that it? It would have been just after seven in the evening there and he was probably just settling down to his after-sunset, predinner margarita with some bimbo in a bikini, and he wants to know how his business is doing. What do you tell him, Jamie? Not very well? I imagine you probably lie about it the way you do about everything else. But that’s another problem. You should have changed your ring tone after you killed Hayley.